InTrade: Obama 68%; Romney 32%
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On the presidential level, where everyone running campaigns is very, very good at their jobs, campaign infighting and incoherence tend to be the result of a candidate being behind in the polls, not the cause of it. Romney is behind and has been there for quite some time. According to the Real Clear Politics average of head-to-head polls, Romney hasn’t led the race since October 2011. The closest he came to a lead in the polls this year was during the Republican National Convention, when he managed to … tie Obama. ...WaPo
And later:
I didn’t realize quite how dire Romney’s situation was until I began reading “The Timeline of Presidential Elections: How Campaigns Do and Don’t Matter,” a new book from political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien.
What Erikson and Wlezien did is rather remarkable: They collected pretty much every publicly available poll conducted during the last 200 days of the past 15 presidential elections and then ran test after test on the data to see what we could say about the trajectory of presidential elections. Their results make Romney’s situation look very dire. ...
... “The party that gains pre- to post-convention on average improves by 5.2 percentage points as measured from our pre- and post-convention benchmarks,” write Erikson and Wlezien. “On average, the party that gains from before to after the conventions maintains its gain in the final week’s polls. In other words, its poll numbers do not fade but instead stay constant post-conventions to the final week.” ...WaPo
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David Brooks (conservative commentator):
Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers. Forty-seven percent of the country, he said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?
It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. ...NYT
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Paul Krugman finds more truth -- in the Post -- about Republicans -- and Mitt Romney, and Romney's host at the fundraiser where the video was shot.
[Marc J.] Leder, who has given nearly $300,000 to Romney and other Republicans this cycle, used part of his fortune to become a co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team and has become a fixture of New York tabloid reports, hobnobbing with rap mogul Russell Simmons and other celebrities. The New York Post dubbed him a “private equity party boy.”
In August 2011, the same tabloid reported on a Hamptons bacchanal at a $500,000-a-night oceanfront mansion rented by Leder, “where guests cavorted nude in the pool and performed sex acts, scantily dressed Russians danced on platforms and men twirled lit torches to a booming techno beat.” ...WaPo
We've been there before! Democrats aren't averse to sex and swimming pools and nakedness. They just aren't known, as Republicans are, for very expensive, elaborate Bohemian Groves and special parties during political conventions.
Hard not to add this link from a former neighbor who (shall we say) went there and investigated Bohemian Grove.
n the end it will be Willard Milton Romney’s own words that that will bring down his seven year run for the presidency. I thank you Romney for speaking your real mind, sure its ugly but it just confirms my feeling that you act more like a Corporation than a person with compassion who realizes that a majority of my country is suffering. Hey the empty chair was a great hit, thanks for the laughs.
Posted by: Montana | September 19, 2012 at 08:19 AM